


Interlude: The In-Laws

by K_dAzrael



Series: Femme!Jokester [3]
Category: Batman (comicverse), DCU - Comicverse, DCU Earth 3
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-06
Updated: 2010-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-05 21:57:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/K_dAzrael/pseuds/K_dAzrael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Owlman pays a visit; Jokester climbs a tree. They both discover things about each other's pasts and parental figures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interlude: The In-Laws

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story I've wanted to write for a while, but I couldn't figure out where exactly to put it. So here it is, shoved out on its own into the cruel, unfeeling world... poor little lonely fic. It's set after 'Urizen' and before 'For Great Justice!'
> 
> Warning: story contains some references to past domestic violence, also Owlman being his usual charming self.

**Part I: Senior**

> **Typhoid**: 'I'm killing that same bastard over and over.   
> I'm doing it for all the little girls out there that can't kill their secret bastards.'   
> ['Typhoid' (Marvel Comics)]

Owlman watches from across the street, invisible among in the blocky shadows that the flat roofs and dumpsters cast across the alley. Finally the door opens and his target huffs and stumbles down the steps of the old brownstone. He stays still and hidden as the man makes his way down the street, following the neon siren call of the basement bar a few blocks away.

Owlman has the front door's yale lock open in under thirty seconds. He passes through a gloomy foyer and climbs a flight of stairs, then moves soundlessly along a corridor illuminated by one buzzing overhead strip light to enter the second apartment on the left. The interior lock, designed for a round-headed key, is so ancient and unsophisticated that all it requires is a few minute turns of the picks. Around the keyhole are the tell-tale dints and scratches of a drunk's fumbling efforts to gain entry.

The apartment reeks – a ripe, suffocating perfume composed of notes of mouldering plasterboard, unwashed clothes, body odour, and the ghosts of fifty-thousand cigarettes. Something else, too – something that makes his nose wrinkle but he can't immediately name.

He doesn't attempt to stifle the creaking of the boards beneath his boots as he crosses the cramped living space to begin the latest phase of his research.

*~*~*

Owlman is perched, waiting when the man returns. The victim announces his entry by letting a stream of yellow light in from the hall and adding vodka fumes to the ambient stench. He kicks the door closed behind him and struggles off with his overcoat, fumbling for a hook on the back of the door and then patting along the wall to find the light switch.

"Jesus fucking Christ!"

_Their expressions are always priceless_, Owlman thinks to himself as shock and idiotic terror register on his man's face. He jumps down from the window ledge and draws himself up imposingly, the cape swishing on the dusty floorboards.

"You know who I am, don't you?"

The man nods, swallowing as he takes a step backwards and falling against the wall. Owlman lunges forward and grasps the front of his stained string-vest, tossing him down on the couch, which spews out more of its crumbly foam stuffing on impact.

"But do you know who _she_ is?" he hisses.

The eyes are blank, glassy with non-comprehension, so Owlman produces a visual aid – using the infa-red beam on his wrist utility to turn on the television in order to play the recording he slipped in earlier of one of Gotham Tonight's little amateur video specials. It's some wobbly footage of the clown shoving a helpless citizen out of the way of one of Owlman's bloodseekers and throwing a flash-bomb to draw its trajectory, grasping a lamppost and spinning her body one-hundred and eighty degrees to land a kick against his chest with both feet.

Owlman stiffens at the sight of a close-up of her mad, shining eyes and the elongated mouth opening (but there is no sound, her laughter is only a memory).

"That crazy bitch from the news... they call her the Jokester," the man replies.

Owlman turns off the picture and glares down at the man still sprawled the couch. "Yeah, but she used to have another name. You know what _that_ was, don't you?"

"No, I swear, I don't know nothin'–"

"Oh, I think you do. Because it's the same as _your_ name, isn't it, Jackie?"

"I don't–" the man makes a twisting, jerking movement as he tries to get up. Owlman bares his teeth in a flashing grin and lunges to bring the steel-capped knuckles of his gauntleted hand into sudden contact with the side of the patella.

"ARRRGHHHH!" the man howls like the dumb animal he is and clutches his leg, then thinks about it for a fraction of a second – staring disbelievingly at the twisted joint – and howls some more, trailing off into whimpers of "Jesus, oh God, FUCK!"

Owlman crosses his arms over his chest and lets him finish with the routine. "Don't do that again or I'll dislocate your other kneecap, understand?" He waits for the man to nod before continuing with: "tell me, Jackie senior, what's so great about _you_ that you thought she needed to have your blue-collar scumbag name? Hm?"

"Her mother. Her mother chose it... liked it, for a girl..."

"Oh _yes_, wifey-dearest. She waited four years before running off. Left you holding the baby, huh? Well, you sure rose to that challenge, didn't you?"

"I did my best for that no-good kid! I gave her a roof over her head."

Owlman grins. He likes drunks – they're defiant, they don't have good self-preservation instincts. "Yeah, and that's not all you gave her. For her sixth birthday you gave her a broken wrist."

"She fell off a swing," Jackie snr. intones dully.

"That's what you told them at the hospital, yes. I'm surprised the morons swallowed that – I'd have said that the injuries were _not consistent_ with a fall."

"She fell," he insists, sulky now.

"You already said that. Not very imaginative, are you? Used the same excuse with the fractured collarbone when she was ten. But what about the concussion, huh?"

"She tripped," he says softly, mechanically, as if it's a story he has often told himself. "Tripped on the stairs. Carpet was loose."

"Took her all the way out of town to County for that, didn't you?" Owlman cocks his head. "What – were you concerned that the staff at Gotham Central might finally catch on?"

Jackie snr. remains sullen, his eyes moist with self-pity.

Owlman continues: "when they put her in a gown for x-ray, they uncovered some marks on her back. They didn't know what made them, but _I do_. A belt, wasn't it? You used the end with the buckle."

"She never listened. She never shut her goddamn trap."

"Social services weren't much better, of course. She drifted back when she was fourteen. All quiet for a few years and then she ends up in hospital again. Facial bruising, a few cracked ribs. Lucky not to lose the baby."

"I told her. I told her not to run around with that pretty-boy Dent. She wouldn't get the hell out – kept sayin' would just be a for a coupla months, but I said 'oh no, you don't – I was a sap for your ma, but I won't be one for you... I raised you, but I sure as hell aint raising your bastard brat – I aint a charity...''"

"So, she comes to you to tell you she's pregnant and your response is to push her down and _kick her_. Yeah, you're father of the century Jackie-boy."

"You don't understand she wasn't... she wasn't normal. Kid was always a fucking freak! Staring at me with those, those eyes like she _knew_. Like she knew everything. I couldn't stand it anymore. Couldn't stand it when she looked through me like that!"

"Did it make you feel like a big man, hmm, whaling on a skinny kid? Did it make up for all the times in your worthless life that people made you feel small?"

Jackie stares at the floor, lost in his own memories: "... she never cried. Just laughed, laughed as if I was a real funny fucking joke to her. Sometimes she stared like I wasn't even there. Like there was somethin' else she was seeing, somethin' more important." He pulls at the tufts of hair at the side of his head as he rocks and murmurs: "I guess I would've stopped if she had cried."

"Well Jackie-boy, I really wouldn't count on that working on _me_." Owlman takes out one of his curved blades and holds it so the other man can see it. "Feel free to bawl as much as you want, though – doesn't mean I don't like to hear it."

*~*~*

Owlman stands in the cramped bedroom and surveys it one last time.

He wasn't really expecting answers – he knew better than to hope for a collection of tell-all letters or a secret diary unlocking the key to her inner life. All the room contains is some decade-old outfits (jeans, tube socks, and band t-shirts washed to paper-thinness), battered old high school textbooks (their covers stuck-over with brown paper and doodled over – he had ample time to peruse those earlier), and a meagre collection of second hand video tapes and records, all comedy (sketch shows, sit-coms, stand-ups and old-time radio shows).

A loose floorboard pulled up in the bedroom revealed the only precious item – a music box – the white and baby-blue baroque-effect paint chipped. When he lifted the lid the faded ballerina still turned on her skewed axis and 'The Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy' still played, too slowly and crazily warped. At first he thought it must be from the lost mother – an heirloom or token of remembrance – but a tear in the faded red felt lining revealed a scrap of yellowed paper tucked within.

> To Jackie,
> 
> I found this in a junk store and it made me think of you.
> 
> Love now and always,
> 
> E.

  
Owlman frowns again as he re-reads it. Why had the she-male freak Dent once thought that the clown was like a broken old music box or a dusty, wonky ballerina? It continues to bother him to think he might never know.

More revealing than this meagre find is perhaps the palpable _absence_ he has detected. He finds it interesting that there is nothing of the mother in the whole apartment, not even a creased old photograph at the back of a drawer (Owlman has photographs). There has been a concerted attempt to purge her from their lives. Perhaps that's what the underlying smell is – sadness. Not simple anger, not a frustration at the conditions or poor quality of life, but a grief so deep and ever-present that it has permeated the walls just like the cigarette smoke and the greasy cooking vapours.

(... And they don't even know what really happened to her, but Owlman knows.)

He takes the music box with him, but doesn't yield to the urge to catalogue everything.

As he crosses the living room he steps over the dark, spreading pool which is running through the cracks between the boards (another thing he likes about drunks is that their blood has trouble clotting).

Jackie snr coughs wetly, his hands clasped over the dark, heaving mass that used to be his belly. "You think you're better than me? You think you're different?" his eyelids flutter. "God help me. She just looked too much like _her_. Kid... wasn't even mine."

He finally stops making excuses.

When Owlman reaches the lobby he feels something drip on his cheek. He looks up and sees a wine-red stain blooming across the dingy white rectangle of ceiling.

It looks like one of _her_ calling cards.

 

**Part II: Martha**

> "He said: 'my mother-in-law is an angel.' I said: 'you're lucky – mine's still alive!'"
> 
> [ - every bad comedian ever]

"Feh," the Jokester mutters as she brushes half-heartedly at the moss-stains on her saffron-coloured tights, "I thought owls were the ones who hid in trees." As the bough creaks at a slightly worrying pitch, she grimaces. _Shouldn't have eaten that last slice of pie - ha!_

She gazes down through the canopy of leaves at the mournful angel with its upturned sightless eyes. _Later I'm coming back to cheer that sucker up with a magic-marker mustache._

> 'IN LOVING MEMORY  
> MARTHA WAYNE  
> BELOVED WIFE AND MOTHER'

  
Terse – conventional – not very funny. _Now Mel Blanc, there was a guy who knew how to write an epitaph..._

She hears the distant rumble of a car engine – _ah, good old predictable Owlsie_. She's been watching him come here for a while now – third Sunday of every month.

A door slams and there comes the sound of feet on gravel as Owlman strides into view. She can never really reconcile herself to the sight of him out of his costume (and she suspects he can't either). He looks almost like a _human being_! The outfit is designed to be inconspicuous: dark grey jacket and pants worn with a white open-necked shirt, nondescript black leather loafers. He could be a anyone. It's eerie, like he's stolen a normal person's skin to wear over his own one of grey and black spandex.

It doesn't help that he's unsettlingly handsome: there's a little acne scarring over his cheekbones (if you look close enough or with binoculars) and the lower row of front teeth are slightly crooked, but these tiny imperfections seem designed, if anything, to highlight the fact that he's movie-star gorgeous. He wears his jet black hair swept back off his temples; he has arched, tapered eyebrows, a strong jaw and eyes in the shade the romance writers like to call 'cerulean blue'. She almost starts giggling uncontrollably as she thinks the word 'dreamboat'.

She wriggles a little further along the branch to observe the really puzzling part of the ritual: he lays the single red rose on the grave, straightens up and takes a step back.

Then he just stands there...

... Staring at the headstone, his face as impassive as the granite of which the monument is carved (but really, what is she hoping for – that he'll break down into sobs? That he'll pound his fists on the grave and shout 'WHYYYYY?' at the uncaring heavens? No... he'll just stand there and think his darkly revolving Owlsie thoughts, and after five minutes he will leave).

_Today will be no different, she thinks, it was pointless climbing up here... ruined a perfectly good costume for nothing; just for a closer look at the king of creepy staring at his dead mama's lousy epitaph._

Then suddenly he turns and raises his chin, spoiling the carefully maintained effect of humanity and handsomeness by making one of his apparently involuntary sneer-faces. "Are you going to come down from there?"

She's so startled to see him staring up at her through the leaves with his head cocked to the side that her knees release their precarious grip on the branch, causing her to slide around underneath it; the sudden jerk of her body weight breaking her grip and causing her to crash down through the canopy and onto the grass below.

"Get up."

As she continues to sprawl there, wondering which way is actually 'up', rough hands grasp her by her braces and drag her upright and against the tree.

"Hey, watch the tailoring!" she shoves him back and dusts down the shorts of her green velvet page-boy outfit, hastily refastening the smiley-buttons of the double-breasted jacket.

"What are you doing here?"

"_Birdwatching_," she grins at him.

"What exactly do you think you're going to see?"

"I just think it's interesting that you have such a sentimental – nay, _corny_ – streak. I mean, a single red rose, really? If you gave one of those to me I'd–"

"Why would I give one to you? You're not dead yet."

"Now, now, Owlsie," after all these years she still loves how he flinches when she uses the demotic form of his name. "No sass-mouth in front of mommy-dearest." She ducks the inevitable punch and darts around the back of the monument. "A-ha-ha... wouldn't kill me on her grave, now, would you? Or is that part of the fantasy? You're one screwed up kid, Bruce Wayne."

"My name is OWLMAN!" he tackles her around the knees as she tries to dodge again and they go down together diagonally across the grave. When he struggles to pin her wrists she howls with laughter.

"You think this is funny?" he hisses, leaning down and huffing his spearmint-scented breath in her face.

"Oh, since you carved the grin in good and permanent, I seem to find everything amusing."

"Well laugh this up – I paid a visit to Jackie senior the other day."

"I know. I read it in the newspaper. Recognised your MO straight away, Amerikan Psycho. Forgive me if I didn't keen and beat my breast on account of the old rat-bastard."

"You want to know what his last words were?"

"Oh, I can guess. Something along the lines of 'she asked for it, she wasn't even mine'?"

"Yeah, but that's the _funny_ part. I ran some DNA tests – oh, there was plenty of blood for that... and guess what?" He leans in even closer, his grip tightening on her wrists. "Match." He pulls back to let her see his smirk. "You're actually related to that 'rat-bastard'. You're half of a pathetic, whimpering booze-hound. Isn't that beautiful?"

"So? Not everyone turns out like their parents. For example, _your_ father is a good man..."

The blow is almost casual, a reflex more than anything which has intention behind it. Jokester laughs and sucks her bloody bottom lip into her mouth.

"Still think this is funny? There's more." He puts his mouth right against her ear to murmur: "_Jeannie died in an asylum in Illinois_."

When she shoves and kicks at him he rolls off her and kneels on the grass. She scrambles away until her back hits the plinth of the monument and looks at him with that strange, unseeing stare. For a moment he hears Jackie senior's slur (_Couldn't stand it when she looked through me like that_).

"Yeah," he continues, "two years after she left Gotham the authorities picked her up on the streets of Jacksonville, where she was found wandering in a 'confused state'. Twelve years in a secure ward. Restraints, anti-psychotics, electro-convulsive therapy – the works. In the doctor's notes it says she kept repeating that she had to tell someone... some elaborate conspiracy theory about red men from between dimensions and the universe coming to an end. It was all she ever talked about – she didn't even remember _you_." Owlman smiles and his voice thrums with malicious pleasure. "So. Now we know why you're a loser and also why you're nuts."

The Jokester's hands clench and unclench on her bony knees. "How did she die?"

"Saved up the sleeping pills in a tear in the mattress."

"Smart girl," the Jokester murmured. "Little red men, you say? Did she mention anything about interesting facial hair? Duela–" she stops herself, suddenly snapping to attention as if she has remembered where she is and who she's talking to. "Never mind."

"Oh yeah, that daughter you crapped out on. Guess we know where you got your mothering skills too, huh?"

Jokester climbs to her feet and dusts herself off again. "That's _enough_, Owlsie."

"You don't get to say when it's enough–"

"Yeah well, it's been fun but I have to get going." She turns her back on him and sticks one hand into her pocket, waving the other airily as she begins to walk away. "Insert ornithological pun here – fight scene – maniacal laughter – dead mother joke, blah blah, you fill in the rest."

He grabs her arm and jerks her backwards. "What?"

"'What?'" she mimics. "Really, Big Bird, I thought we were done with the old routines. Look, I know you're mad at yourself because you had me at your mercy and you couldn't uh, _perform_–"

His fingertips dig into her bicep. "What?"

"Apocalyptic rooftop battle, remember? My near-death prevented by your grappling hook – what did you think I meant? Oh, oh!" she widens her eyes and fans her hand out over her mouth. "I can't really comment from personal experience _there_, but well, we've all read Superwoman's blog... what's a 'gondolier' anyw–"

He snarls and grabs her other arm, slamming her back against the plinth, holding her so her feet dangle inches off the ground. "Shut. Up." he bites out, baring his teeth and leaning in close.

She rolls her eyes and sighs a little wryly, as if he constitutes a minor inconvenience. "You're not going to kiss me again, are you?"

"No," he tilts his head back. "Why would I do that?"

"I don't know, why did you do it the first time?" In response Owlman frowns, for a moment seeming genuinely at a loss for a snide retort. "Oh, was it because I was all sad and broken? Did you want to put me back together with your magical healing smootchy-wooch–OW!" she closes one eye and squints with the other as he jerks her forwards and then back again so the back of her skull thuds against the stone.

"Look... look.." she tilts her head to one side and licks her lips, adopting the patiently didactic manner that always accompanies one of her 'On the Nature of Owlman and the Jokester' speeches. "I won't kill you because I don't have the stones – we've been there, right? I've held the gun, I've dropped it – and you won't kill me because you're the most bored guy in the whole world, and I'm the closest thing you have to fun in your grim little life – case in point, you stopped me throwing not only yourself, but _myself_ off the roof back when I had that one reeeeeally bad day."

"So, what then, you think we're _done_?"

"No we're not done – we both feel that – but... we need to reconfigure. There's one thing I do know – there's a storm a' comin' and we're both gonna have new parts to play. It's me and you against something bigger than us."

"What kind of storm?"

She puts on a silly, quavering voice: "'Difficult to see... always in motion is the future'."

"Against what – Ultraman?"

The Jokester shrugs as best she can and holds up her hands. He finally releases his grip, letting her drop to the ground. "You're delusional," he growls, taking a step back.

"Yeah, maybe. I hear it runs in the family."

"Hmpf." Owlman crouches down and rearranges the trampled rose, removing the crushed outer petals and discarding them for the breeze to disperse.

The Jokester moves to stand by his side, crossing her arms over her chest. "So, what do you think, Brucey – would mom be proud to see you growed up all big, strong and homicidal?"

"I don't leave it for her." he says as he straightens up. "It's for _him_... so when the old bastard comes here he'll know there's someone who remembers how he failed."

She blinks up at him. "You know, most boys eventually grow out of that awkward oedipal phase."

"Quiet, clown."

There is a moment of silence as they stand there casting long, diagonal shadows across the grave in the afternoon light. Eventually she puts a hand to his shoulder and pipes up with: "so... think she'd approve of your choice of life-partner?"

He throws her an incredulous look. "Meaning _you_? I think she'd turn in her gr–"

The Jokester hangs on his arm and laughs until the tears run down her face, melting her mascara and leaving pink tracks in the chalky white base.

\- END

**Author's Note:**

> Mel Blanc was the voice of Bugs Bunny and many other Looney Tunes characters. The epitaph on his headstone is of course 'that's all folks!'
> 
> 'Jeannie' is the name of the Joker's pregnant wife in the flashback sequences of 'The Killing Joke'. I figured she could be someone important in femme!Jokester's life, so I mixed it up a bit with the generations. 'Red men from between the dimensions' = the Monitors, as you probably all realised from reading Countdown. Gondolier-related impotence refers to the infamous incident where he fails to get it on with Superwoman in 'JLA: Syndicate Rules'. :D


End file.
